Bombardment of Lowestoft and Yarmouth

Shortly after four in the morning on 25 April 1916 the inhabitants of Lowestoft, a fishing port on the coast of Suffolk, were woken by the roar of heavy guns. Four German battlecruisers of Rear-Admiral Friedrich Bödicker were firing from the sea, from a range of about 10–13 kilometres. It was the first bombardment of an English town by German heavy ships since December 1914. The day before, the Rising had broken out in Dublin, and many historians believe that the Germans planned their raid to coincide with its beginning.

The night before the bombardment

The British were expecting an attack. The Admiralty knew from intercepted signals that the German High Seas Fleet had put to sea, and before midnight it established that its battlecruisers were heading straight for Yarmouth. Patrols and minesweepers on the coast were recalled to port, and airmen were ordered to look out for the enemy at dawn. During the night German airships circled over Norfolk and Suffolk. Their bombs fell mainly on villages and fields. In the village of Dilham in Norfolk an elderly woman reportedly died of fright as bombs exploded around her house.

Meanwhile Commodore Reginald Tyrwhitt had put out from Harwich with three light cruisers and more than a dozen destroyers. Some of his destroyers had only just returned from off Belgium, where the day before they had covered the laying of a mine barrage. Tyrwhitt had orders to sail out into the open sea and from there draw the Germans into a submarine ambush, but when he learnt where the battlecruisers were heading, he turned straight towards them on his own responsibility. The British official history says that he could not bear the thought of the enemy once again shelling the English coast with impunity.

A quarter of an hour of fire

At about 3.50 a.m., at first light, Tyrwhitt sighted German light cruisers and destroyers, and ahead of them the silhouettes of battlecruisers. He showed himself to the Germans and turned south, feigning flight, but Bödicker would not be drawn off. At 4.10 a.m. his ships opened fire on Lowestoft. The first salvoes fell into the water, then the shells began to land on the harbour and the streets. According to local accounts, among the buildings hit was the pavilion on the South Pier, which housed the headquarters of the local naval forces. The bombardment lasted about ten minutes. In that time the shells destroyed or damaged about 200 houses. According to research by the local war museum, four people were killed, three civilians and one serviceman, and 19 were wounded. Some studies give three killed.

The Germans then sailed north to Great Yarmouth. There mist and smoke obscured the target, and the battlecruisers fired only a few rounds. The town hardly suffered. The only British submarine that was on station off Yarmouth dived to attack, but was too far away. Two others were hampered by British aircraft, which did not know they were there and tried to bomb them.

The clash with Tyrwhitt

At 4.30 a.m. Tyrwhitt, who had turned north again, opened fire on the light cruisers Rostock and Elbing. The Germans did not reply, but drew the British towards the battlecruisers, which appeared on the horizon at 4.45 a.m. Tyrwhitt turned away, but after a few minutes a salvo of heavy shells hit his flagship, the cruiser Conquest. Twenty-five men were killed, many of them among the galley and wardroom staff, and more than a dozen were wounded. The destroyer Laertes was also hit. The British laid a smokescreen, and after a quarter of an hour or so the Germans ceased fire and sailed away eastwards, towards their battleships waiting off Terschelling. On the way they sank the patrol trawler King Stephen.

Tyrwhitt made makeshift repairs and set off after the Germans. At about 8.30 a.m. he saw smoke on the horizon, but the Admiralty ordered him to return. On the way back a torpedo damaged the rudder of the cruiser Penelope, and the German submarine UB-18 sank the British submarine E22, which was lying in wait on the Germans’ line of retreat. By the afternoon Tyrwhitt’s force was back in Harwich. Many of the inhabitants of Lowestoft no longer wanted to spend the night in the town. A local clergyman recorded that for many nights afterwards hundreds of people went out to sleep in the neighbouring village of Carlton, occupying every shed and empty barn.